


The Loyal Men

by Teawithmagician



Series: Goodness, it's Stucky! [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: AU, Bucky Barnes Recovering, F/M, Female Steve Rogers, Het, Mental Health Issues, Minor Violence, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, split personality, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 20:00:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6092350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teawithmagician/pseuds/Teawithmagician
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winter Soldier wants to live, too, but Bucky Barnes is not going to give up easily.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Loyal Men

**Author's Note:**

> With all the devotion to M. and her headcanons inspiring me to work on these two more.
> 
> "When you've suffered enough and your spirit is breaking, you're growing desperate from the fight, remember you're loved and you always will be. This melody will bring you right back home." 
> 
> \- Linkin Park, "The Messenger".
> 
> "You say you're not gonna fight 'cause no one will fight for you, and you think there's not enough love and no one to give it to. And you're sure you've hurt for so long you've got nothing left to lose, so you say you're not gonna fight 'cause no one will fight for you."
> 
> \- Linkin Park, "Robot Boy".

He wakes up in the morning. The first thing to get in his mind is that he remembers yesterday, a day before yesterday and a day before. All days before the day he breaks free from the cryochamber.

Some days are smudged a bit. He worries they turn into the dark spots like the rest of his memory, but the days remain though they're a little blurry. That must be normal even for the trained memory, but he can't get rid of the feeling he starts to forget. He doesn't want to.

She lies beside him, her arm across his chest. He remembers her. Mostly there are memories related to Barnes, but he has the memories of his own, too. Her name is Stevie Rogers, ranked captain, and she's been his mission before she has become his reason.

He presses his lips to her eyebrow. It is not a kiss, it's the way he can smell her better. She is alive and warm, she treats him like no one else and she cares if he is okay with that. He experiences what he calls a devotion: he is devoted to her because he remembers her face from the times he hasn't even existed.

The man whom he has once been kept her photo in his notebook. The notebook was full of really bad poems. They've been so bad Winter Soldier remembers them from the insights of his previous life. 

He likes to read, likes to know more, he tried to remember by heart as many texts as he could to keep his memory functioning after erasing. He remembers sergeant Barnes' poems from the times he had nothing to learn instead of them. 

Barnes loved captain Steve Rogers, that was one of the things Winter Soldier knew of him first. He loved her but was always confused by the way he felt because they've grown up together. Barnes considered Stevie as his sister. To treat her like a woman he loved, for him was incestual.

Still, the captain must have been an interesting person, Winter Soldier noticed that. He wanted to meet her one day and to fight her on the edge of their abilities. But after that, there was the time he was erased and rewound so often Barnes memory faded away. He thought, completely.

When Winter Soldier saw her in the rifle sight, he remembered something that stirred his mind. Nothing but a feeling, yet he got distracted by it. A stranger's face, a woman saying the things he didn't even remember, things that were not supposed to exist in his world. That made him feel bad.

He remembers the time his world started to collapse. It happened when he heard Barnes' voice in his head. Barnes was extremely angry. He shouted and swore, telling Winter Soldier he was a murderer, he was a monster, he was a terrible piece of HYDRA shit, he must've never ever come to the light, letting Stevie see him like that.

Barnes' voice started to grow, Winter Soldier ears tingled. The memories of Barnes started to grow, too, they swelled like a blob, displacing Winter Soldier to the mute and obedient darkness he had been before. He had been there for all those years before HYDRA: he was there to pull the trigger, to punch the big guy into the teeth, to have the guts to speak to the most beautiful women, to get conscripted and leave NY.

He wasn't allowed to have his voice, his memories and his point of view, from which Barnes was a cowardice bastard. 

Barnes displaced Winter Soldier with all the power of his "now and when". Barnes had forgotten about only one thing: Winter Soldier had time enough to strengthen his positions. He was no more pale shadow of Barnes. He had a name, he had a life of his own though the quality of this life was noticeably low. He had made a choice, he had made a decision and he learned to live with that. 

He escaped HYDRA. He overcame his past, and he needed no Barnes. Even more, he needed no Barnes but he was going to take away Barnes life because it was Winter Soldier life, too. 

He pretended to surrender and let Barnes go. He waited in the darkness, feeding on the echoes of Barnes' unreasonable actions and his accidental senless thoughts. He waited for Barnes to lose consciousness and to lose control. Barnes had to lose it in the end, his experience of the civil war in his own head was pitiful, he couldn't win over Winter Soldier in that combat. 

When Barnes had finally lost it, Winter Soldier made a rush and took over the mind and body what always truly belonged to him. It was his place. The place he wanted to be was his place. Why was it so hard to understand, Barnes?

“Bucky,” Stevie opens her eyes. Her eyes are blue like a winter sky. The sky and the snow, the smell of the frost and the pale, hasty sun. It comes for a couple of hours just to be gone over the flaming horizon. But when the sun comes, everybody is looking only at it.

“No.” She wants him to say he is Bucky. He can say that, but he doesn't want to. For him, she means no less than for Bucky. He has a right to has the name of his own, so he corrects her every time she forgets: he is not Bucky.

She looks at him with the same way he looks at the sun over the neverending snows. She opens his mouth, she wants to say something to make him sure he is, but she only sighs and looks at him, her chin on her shoulder. He knows she wants stability, she doesn't like what's happening to him. He also knows she promises she'll follow him till the end of the line.

“Who of you are in charge of your progress?” she asks.

“Who of us?” He doesn't like he question. He doesn't like when she says there must be Barnes inside of him. There is Barnes, there still is Barnes somewhere in the darkness, on the outer rim of his mind, banned for he was too weak to bear the responsibility for them both, but Stevie is not supposed to know that.

“You did well,” Stevie puts her hand on his metal arm. She sleeps on the right side of the bed because when he touches her with his metallic arm, she shivers from the cold.

He actually likes the arm. It's a weapon, a crucial point that makes his body balanced. It is helpful, it's convenient, it gives him benefits, it makes him more effective, but in the bed, it's nothing more than a cold piece of iron he never knows where to get not to interfere Stevie with.

He hates to make her shiver. It makes him feel in the way he tells himself he is not bothered at all. Natasha has said to him he'd have his time to feel like a monster in the world of happy vigilantes. He hasn't minded her words, he considered them senseless - she got the situation wrong, he wasn't going to become a part of anything, he is not fitting himself into the circumstances, but....

The moment comes when he's not ready for it. He can hardly make himself touch Stevie's cheek with his metallic fingers because they are for work only. His work has been many things Stevie shouldn't know about.

As Stevie looks at him he raises his hand, he moves the elbow, he clenches and unclenches his fingers, testing the way it works. He knows there is a tracking device inside as S.H.I.E.L.D. has an eye on him even while he is on Captain America's balance. He accepts it as reasonable measures, he wouldn't understand them letting him go unleashed.

In the end, they need to make sure they can make use of him.

“It is modernized,” he says. “Joints are replaced. Good work.”

“The covering is mobile metal plates, am I right?” Stevie moves her hand up and down his arm, her short nails clicking on the plates. “Beautiful work.”

“No, it's not.” The war machines are never beautiful for him. They are purposeful, they are useful, they are driving attention, but they are objects of professional interest. He protests even to hear of them as the objects of art.

“I think it is.” Stevie sits on the bed, holding his wrist. She looks at his fingers and he wants to clench them, to hide his palm. A moment of confusion, he doesn't like to be put out in the light, glimpses of sun reflecting from his fingers. He himself, his arm, they are not to be looked like that, it is not going to work that way, he is not coming to the light to be looked at and discussed like a showpiece.

She kisses his fingers still smelling with welding and grease. She puts her cheek into his hand as he has it open. He thinks of how he can smash a human head with his fingers only. He is cautious of his every impulse which can cause sudden movement just not to hurt her.

He says he loves her. He is afraid of what he says.

They make out, but the statement is not confirmed yet. He can't feel for her in the way he wants, feeling means letting Barnes out, letting the memories come together, merging them into something new, but he doesn't want it to be something new. He has spent so much time restoring, he doesn't want to become someone new again.

He is lost. He knows it but never says aloud. He can't go alone. He needs her to hold his hand.

“I'm going to make a sketch of you, “ Stevie says. “Full-size, maybe on the bed. I always wanted to.” She blushes just a little, it's duty blush. She blushes saying he is handsome or she wants him to stay in her bed, or to make out in the way she likes best. These are the things he doesn't understand but likes to notice.

She never blushes with the others. It's her blush that differs him from them, so he likes it.

“There are safety restrictions on images,” he says. Something he remembers of from one of his lives. “Bad idea.”

“It's only for me. I want to have a picture of you. A legal one,” she underlines the word. “I used to draw you by the memory because when you were not around. I made sketches when I thought you are not looking because I was accustomed to having my practice on you. Now I want to make a picture you know about. An official one.”

She doesn't differ him from Barnes, he understands. He hates then she talks like that, but he doesn't even know how to make a line between two different lives he's perfectly aware of, but the others can hardly understand. Even Stevie, though she is the first to understand the things some people can't even imagine.

Natasha says Stevie is her friend. Kind of. The strongest words he has ever heard from her. That means a lot.

“You didn't draw me,” he talks harshly. He doesn't want to be harsh on her, but he just can't say it in any other way.

“No,” she is so stubborn, but she is not stubborn about him, she is stubborn about what she believes in. “I was drawing you. I know you are changed, and I know you are not the same person I used to know. But I know you both now, and you both are my friends. And you both are my, well, special friends.”

“He wasn't your lover.” It's so easy for him to lose his temper with the memory of Barnes in the back of his mind. Barnes has no right to be remembered in this way. He lost his chance. He must learn to admit it. “He has never been. He never had the guts.”

Stevie rubs her face with her arms. She does it when she wants to punch him in the face, but she has to be understanding. Her knees are beautiful but bruised. The floor is not the better place, but the furniture can't bear them both when they are making out. Stevie is devoted to her flat, she says it a place of her own she always dreamed about. She doesn't want to buy new furniture every two weeks, so they are trying to work it out with what they have.

“It's not easy,” she says, looking at him with her slightly pinkish face. "You are not easy." A skin so fair, the words Winter Soldiers find appearing in his mind. The serum didn't change the skin. A fit of anger, Barnes, how does he know? He doesn't even know. He is not there.

"I am not easy, too,” she admits it rather fast only by looking at him. “I know, I'm not a girlfriend type. I always wanted to be your girl in the way nobody wanted. Not wearing your jacket or... Well, sometimes wearing your jacket. Most of all, I wanted to be close to you. To have you by my side. To fight together till the end of times. To sleep in your tent, to wake up together, to share everything we would come trough – together.”

He knows it's not the memories of him and he knows it. He gets up from the bed and walks away, through the twilight passage to the bathroom door nobody bothered to close yesterday. There is a mirror on the wall, what's why he's coming to the bathroom. He doesn't like the way the thought pops out of his mind at the last moment. That means he doesn't control the situation, and if he doesn't control it, that must be somebody else.

The heavy feeling of being watched falls on him like a crude iron plate. The long thick hospital door closes, he is alone in the light of the surgical lamps. Sickeningly white tiled wall are moving, he is alone on the white field of blind cells hardly outlined with gray scratches, and the mirror looks right into him, so big it takes all the space before him.

There is a man in the uniform standing behind his shoulder, European and U.S. military awards and planks on his chest. His hands are in the pockets, his cap moved to one side, he's hair is so greased it looks like a cape under the cape. He holds a fresh newspaper under his arms and looks at him like he is nothing.

“So, we meet again, buddy,” the handsome military says. “How far do you think you can run from me?”

He punches the military man violently, he tries to catch him capture and break his neck, break his spine, break his every bone, but he fails. The military man dodges so easy he feels heavy and clumsy with his metallic claw of the arm. Sergent Barnes is not fighting, he is dancing, and he is having fun – his uniform is not even wrinkled, his face is perfectly calm and just a little bit bored.

“I like to dance,” Barnes confesses. “Do you like to rape? Because you raped Stevie. She thought you are me, and she wanted to do it with me. You took my place and raped her."

Winter Soldier throws himself on Barnes, they fall down to the ground. He starts to hit Barnes' face so violently there must be a mess of flesh and bones under his hand, but it appears to be a blank space. There's no Barnes in his arms. Barnes is standing before him, watching him with disgust.

“Do you think you can fuck her like your sluts?” Barnes asks.

Winter Soldiers clenches his teeth and make a rush, but he can't even touch Barnes – he is never able to shut him up or to beat the life out of his pretty, cowardy face. Barnes always dodges because it's the way he is: dodging the pain.

“She is Everest higher than you,” Barnes warns. “Get the hell away from her. How do you dare even to kiss her with your dirty mouth? You are nothing. A brainwashed HYDRA toy. Do you think they used you only like a murderer?” Bucky laughs, and Winter Soldier growls like an animal. 

“They used every fucking part of you, and you don't even remember,” Bucky kicks him with the top of his boot. “It has me who kept the memory together. It was me who kept you from turning into the beast. It was me who told you what to do for all this time. And you've stolen my body.”

“You are not me,” Winter Soldier lies on the ground. His arm is either a metallic arm or a bleeding stub covered torn wounds with the yellowish bones looks out from the flesh holes. He wears either green sweatpants or white patients' rope, he is standing either on the piled floor or on the snow, his feet hurt.

“I am you,” Bucky leans over Winter Soldier. “And I am not going to stand and look what are you turning her into, mark my word.”

Bucky spits the last words into Winter Soldier's face menacingly. But Winter Soldier knows his tricks, they invented them together. He hits Bucky with his forehead right in the face to hear his bones crack, breaking.

It's not the bones cracking, it's a mirror, Winter Soldier breaks it with his head. Shattered pieces of glass clangs into the sink, a few remains in the frame to let him see Stevie standing in the doorway. She is wrapped in the alpaca blanket, she looks at him, his face covered with blood, his eyes roaming wild.

Stevie's chest is moving. She is holding a towel which has hanged from the wall next to the shower. Perhaps, she is going to give him a towel and say she is tired of it. He is tired, too. He is exhausted. He tries to live a life of his own, but the dark hole into his memory is sucking the sense out of everything he approaches.

He knows she is tired. He can't ask her for more. 

“I though it's all over now,” she says and press the towel to his bleeding forehead. “Do you feel bad?”

“I'm okay,” he takes the towel, he barely feels his forehead aching, all the tactile experiences are distant. They made him so, too, when he is in pain, the pain becomes the most faraway part of him so it doesn't distract. “The glass is not.”

“What?” Stevie raises her eyes. The alpaca blanket she wears like a toga makes her look like a gypsum statue in the garden of snow and women with paddles, watching him with blank eyes from their pedestals.

“I've broken your mirror,” he explains. She doesn't like to have her things broken: glasses, plates, everything. It's important to her for everything is safe, everyone is safe. He remembers that.

“We can always buy another,” Stevie look at him like he is talking nuisance, but she is polite enough to answer to the most insane things he knows she thinks he sometimes says. “Get better, please. It's just a mirror. I don't want you to hit a train one day.”

“If I hit a train, I will break it, too.”

“I hope the insurance will cover the expenses, or I'll have to search for another job.”

She sighs and he doesn't know if she is holding back tears or laughter. It astonishes him how she accepts things he can't, how bitterly she sometimes weeps in the night but stands brave and tall before any threat. How she gives him her devotion, though she doesn't really know him, and, not knowing who he is and should she really trust him or not, she doubtlessly gives him her hand.


End file.
